Living the Heavenly Dream

Introduction

Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo was born on March 3, 1882 in Italy to a once-wealthy couple. By the time Carlo was born, they had lost nearly everything and this young boy had to grow up in near poverty. As he grew to a young adult, he had heard about the American Dream and made his way to the US with only $200 to his name. However, when he arrived, he had lost all but $2.50. He went from job to job, trying to make a living, but often being fired or quitting so he wouldn’t be fired. Eventually, he got married and worked for his wife’s family at an import/export business, and it was here that he finally caught his big break.

He received an envelope with an International Reply Coupon, often used for international pen pals or international goods to be sent from one country to another. The person wanting a reply would go to their post office and buy not only their own stamp, but a stamp for the other side. The person who received the letter or order would then take that stamp that was included back to their own post office and exchange it for their own country’s stamp.

Carlo discovered this discrepancy in exchange rates and began to take advantage of the system. He could buy a stamp cheaply in once country and have a colleague exchange it in the other country for a higher value. However, they were never exchanged for another stamp; they’d just exchange them for their full value. Pretty soon, Carlo was making some big bucks.

Eventually, the USPS caught on and suspended his account. This was not good for business. You see, Carlo had gotten other people in on this, except he didn’t exactly tell them what he was doing. He was just promising to make them rich, and that’s all they wanted to know. When his account was suspended, Carlo had to think of something quickly. He began to pay off his early investors with new investors. But then the Boston Post ran a couple of exposés on him and his accumulated, although suspicious, wealth. His new investors slowed down to almost nothing. Suddenly the gig was up, and Carlo Pietro Giovanni Guglielmo Tebaldo (Did I forget to mention his last name?) Ponzi was found to be a schemer--a fraud. Surprisingly enough, Ponzi didn’t go to jail for defrauding people out of $15 million dollars (about $235 million today). He went to jail for mail fraud. The American Dream can often cause people to act in ways that we would find horrifying, or as Paul wrote

1 Tim 6:9

1 Timothy 6:9 ESV

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

What if we were to exchange the American Dream for a Heavenly one instead?

This morning, we are looking at what God has to say about wealth from the perspective of the most wealthiest human being ever to live: King Solomon. According to the Bible, Solomon accumulated so much money that one would have to combine Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Page’s wealth (the top five richest men in America) and then double it to match what Solomon had.

Solomon seems to have had a principle of wealth in mind that is seen throughout the book of Proverbs (and Eccelsiastes as well). Yet, how does this principal get lived out in our world today? That’s what we want to know and what we want to model in our lives. As Michael just read, Solomon calls on us to dedicate our wealth to God, and we do that with three actions (and these aren’t optional). The first action is to dedicate our wealth for God’s glory. The second action we take to dedicate our wealth to God is to dedicate it for God’s gifting. The final is to dedicate our wealth for God’s greatness.

Three intertwined and necessary actions we must constantly take in order to dedicate our wealth to God:

Dedicate Our Wealth for God’s Glory

Dedicate Our Wealth for God’s Gifting

Dedicate Our Wealth for God’s Greatness

Dedicate Our Wealth for God’s Glory

The first action that we need to take, if we want to dedicate our wealth to God, is to actually dedicate it for God’s glory. Here is the thing though: most Christians, if they have gone to church long enough, have probably heard how we are stewards/servants of God’s money. He is allowing us to serve him with what he has given to us. That is certainly true. However, I do believe that for most Christians, it is more of a theory than a practice. It’s more of a doctrine to believe than an action to take.

Typically, the Christian will take their income, and wanting to glorify God, they put aside their tithes and/or offerings. What happens then is that the tithe and/or offerings is dedicated to God and for God’s glory, but the rest of the money is not. We almost have this two-story concept of our wealth. In the upper story, we have God’s money. This is our tithes, offerings, maybe mission money or something like that. It’s “holy” money. Then, in the lower story, we have profane money. This is used for everything else: mortgages, utilities, gasoline, clothes, entertainment, retirement, and so forth.

What would it look like if we were to tear down the ceiling dividing the holy money and the profane money and just had one story in which all the money was holy? What would life be like for us if we stopped for a few moments when we receive a paycheck and dedicate to use all of our wealth—our money, our clothes, our property—for God’s glory? I think a couple of changes would occur. First, we’d take more time contemplating how we have and will use our resources that God has given us. Secondly, we will make decisions about our wealth that others will find odd or even infuriating.

Such is the case with Mary, Martha and Lazarus’s sister. A little while before this incident, Martha hosted Jesus and his disciples as they were going on their journey. Mary is sitting, listening to Jesus teach, something women typically weren’t allowed to do with men around. Martha got upset, and asked Jesus to intervene by telling Mary to help her sister. Jesus’s response was quite surprising:

Luke 10:41–42 ESV

But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

Martha was dedicated to honoring Jesus by service, but Mary was dedicated to honoring Jesus by sitting. Fast forward some time, and Jesus and the disciples are back at Martha and Mary’s house. Lazarus is freshly risen from the grave, and they are all having dinner. Once again, we find Martha serving the guests—somebody’s got to do it! This time, Mary is strangely absent. Everyone is lounging around enjoying their bread and grapes and fish, but there’s no sign of Mary. Suddenly she enters the room carrying a pound of nard.

Spikenard was a costly ointment that was used for burials or for rich people’s perfume. It came all the way from the Himalayas. It was rare, and it was expensive and it was dedicated to glorify Jesus, preparing him for his burial. She poured the ointment on his feet and then wiped it with her hair. John tells us the fragrance filled the house! No one saw it coming, but someone spoke out against it.

John 12:4–5 ESV

But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?”

Of course, Judas wasn’t concerned about the poor. He was more concerned about lining his own pockets, but he reveals how expensive this ointment was. He said it was worth three hundred denarii. A denarii was a day’s wage. In order to get the full impact of how much this cost, we should stop and not think so much about how much is a denarii worth back then, but how much would three hundred days worth of wages be today? The average American makes $120/day. That means that the cost of this spikenard, spilled over the feet of Jesus was worth about $36,000! First, Mary broke tradition when she sat at Jesus feet, but Mary broke the bank when she anointed them!

Judas’s complaint was not simply that the ointment was wasted on Jesus’s feet, but if we look closely, Judas’s complaint was more about the ointment having been kept for so long and not sold! His accusation against Mary was that she was holding onto something for so long that could have done so much good to help the poor.

But Jesus, once again, came to the defense of Mary. “The poor you will always have with you, but you do not always have me.” Mary had chosen wisely—she dedicated her wealth for the glory of God. And don’t confuse the church with Jesus or with God. Certainly a biblical church seeks to glorify God in how she stewards God’s money that has come from God’s people, but there are many ways to glorify God that does not involve the local church.

Solomon wrote,

Proverbs 3:9–10 ESV

Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine.

The word honor has the same root as glory in the Hebrew language. It means that one displays how weighty Yahweh is. In essence, we display that living for God, under God, in God, by God, is a weighty matter. He’s not some “big guy upstairs.” He’s not some ethereal force. When we discuss God we are discussing weighty matters. When we worship God, we worship joyfully but soberly. When we utilize our wealth, we utilize it with heaviness. The way we use our wealth displays what we believe about God. Is he a big deal to us or is he of minimal importance?

Solomon included our first fruits—the tithes and offerings along with our wealth. It is our wealth—all that is in our possession, but it is also our income. And the general truth is that if we dedicate our wealth for God’s glory, we receive back plenty to satisfy our every need. There are exceptions, but this tends to be the general rule.

Dedicate Our Wealth for God’s Gifting

The first action we must take if we are to honor God with our wealth is to dedicate it for God’s glory. Glorifying God with our wealth might sound a bit too intangible. We need some examples. Certainly Mary’s dedication to Jesus’s glory is one such moment. Yet, Jesus no longer walks the earth; how would we glorify him, and so glorify the Father as well, with our money? The Bible helps us out here with the second step: dedicating our wealth for God’s gifting.

Around 901 BC, King Ben-Hadad of Syria besieged the city of Samaria. King Jehoram was the king of the northern tribes and Elisha was their prophet. The people of Samaria were starving to death. They had resorted to cannibalism, and were eating anything they could find. The writer of 2 Kings tells us that a donkey’s head was sold for eighty shekels of silver--that would be about $176 today. Now, who wants to eat donkey head for dinner? No one, unless you’re starving. They would save up bird droppings and sell it for food. Five shekels, i.e. $11! Talk about supply and demand and price-gouging. But when you’re starving, you’ll pay anything.

Elisha, however, promises that by the next day a seah of flour, which is a little over seven pounds, would be sold for a single shekel--about $2, and fourteen pounds of barley would be the same price: $2. In other words, there would be an abundance of food. It seemed too good to be true; in fact, no one believed him.

The next day, four lepers who themselves were starving, decided they’d go to the Syrians and ask for food. They were desperate. If they did nothing, they’d starve. If they went and the Syrians killed them, so what; they’d die anyway. But maybe the Syrians would be gracious and give them food. When they arrived, the Syrians were gone. They had fled just a little while earlier. They left all their food behind, and the lepers were overcome with joy, and they began to eat and then made off with some gold and silver and clothing.

2 Kings 7:9 ESV

Then they said to one another, “We are not doing right. This day is a day of good news. If we are silent and wait until the morning light, punishment will overtake us. Now therefore come; let us go and tell the king’s household.”

These men realized that the wealth that they had found was not only for themselves, but was a gift from God to give to those in need. Did these people deserve this wealth to be shared? No. In fact, it was the sin of the people, from the king to the servant, that had caused God to send the Syrians to besiege them in the first place. Moses had warned the people in Deuteronomy 28 that such a type of siege would take place. Yet, in God’s grace he provided a wealth of food, money, and clothing to four unclean lepers to gift the undeserving, idolatrous people. For what purpose? That they would see the goodness of God and repent.

Of course, we could rightly see that this is not simply about the wealth that comes from money, but also the wealth that comes from knowing Jesus as our Savior. Just before this siege took place, we read the story of Naaman, the commander of the Syrian army who was diagnosed with leprosy. The writer of 2 Kings tells us that it was because of him that God gave victory to Syria. In one of the campaigns, he had kidnapped a little girl and made her a slave for his wife. When he contracted leprosy, it was a death sentence, until, that is, that little slave girl told him of Elisha’s power to heal.

2 Kings 5:3 ESV

She said to her mistress, “Would that my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.”

The wealth of the knowledge of salvation had to be shared, even with her kidnapper and enslaver. Before that was the raising of the Shulammite widow’s son. Much of what happened in 1 and 2 Kings is to show that God is the God of salvation, but it takes people who know the value--the wealth--of the good news to tell others. Today, that salvation is not simply a physical salvation, but an eternal salvation found only in Jesus Christ. Only he can fill our besieged, starving souls. Only he can restore our leprous hearts. Only he can bring our dead spirits back to life. As Isaiah said about his sacrificial death, by his stripes we are healed.

And so we now have the wealth of knowledge of salvation, but we also have a wealth of possessions that opens up opportunities for the gospel. It is what we’ve been called to do and to give. We dedicate our wealth for God’s gifting to others. Paul pointed this out perfectly to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20.

His final words to these men had to do with working hard to acquire wealth to give away.

Acts 20:33–35 ESV

I coveted no one’s silver or gold or apparel. You yourselves know that these hands ministered to my necessities and to those who were with me. In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”

It was this same sentiment that Paul wrote to the Corinthians,

2 Corinthians 9:10–11 ESV

He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.

So we share our wealth, being God’s gifters to others, and in so doing, glorifying Jesus and the Father as well.

Matthew 25:37–40 ESV

Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

If we truly want to dedicate our wealth to God, we must dedicate it for God’s gifting to others.

Dedicate Our Wealth for God’s Greatness

But it is not only that we would dedicate our wealth for God’s gifting and God’s glory, but we dedicate it for God’s greatness to be seen and known. This is a common theme in Proverbs. The reason we are to dedicate our wealth to God is for God’s greatness to be seen and known. When we dedicate our wealth, it means that we no longer hold on to it as if it were our own. It means that we give it away when called by God to do so. That means that we must then trust God to give to us as we give to others. We must trust that if God ceases to give to us as much, then he is calling upon us for a season to slow our giving down as well.

Remember the verse that Michael read out of Proverbs 11:28

Proverbs 11:28 ESV

Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf.

We don’t trust in the gift; we trust in the Giver. We don’t trust in benefits; we trust in the Benefactor. We don’t trust in the goods; we trust the One who is good. You see, when we trust our riches, we lose trust in God.

Look at what Solomon wrote about those who trust in their wealth:

Proverbs 10:15 ESV

A rich man’s wealth is his strong city; the poverty of the poor is their ruin.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that this is a parallel of opposites. We can see that the poverty of the poor is their ruin is not ideal. We don’t want to be ruined; we should best avoid poverty if we can. Solomon warns against romanticizing the idea of being poor. But then we need to see that Solomon also shows the power of riches, but not as a guiding principle, but as a warning as well. “The rich man’s wealth is his strong city.” It’s his refuge; it’s his place to run and hide. He uses it when he is trouble. He uses it to get out of jams. Solomon isn’t saying this is how it ought to be, but how it typically is. The more wealth one has, the less he runs to God as his strong city, his strong tower, his refuge. He trusts in his riches to get him out. If this is what he does, he makes much of his wealth and very little of his God. Many a Christian will sing “How Great is Our God” when, if they were honest, would sing more accurately, “How Great is My Wealth.” It is no wonder Jesus said

Matthew 6:24 ESV

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.

You will either serve God with your wealth or you will serve wealth as your god; it’s as simple as that. If you and I are serious about dedicating our wealth to God then we must take the the necessary action to dedicate it for God’s greatness. Trust God and so show off his greatness not your acumen for acquiring wealth and not your ability to make a dollar stretch. Because that, in its own way, is a trust in wealth. I appreciate what Tim Keller wrote in Counterfeit Gods.

“Greed hides itself from the victim. The money gods modus operandi includes blindness to your own heart. ...Jesus warns people far more about greed than about sex, yet almost no one thinks they are guilty of it. Therefore we should all begin with the working hypothesis that ‘this could easily be a problem for me.’ If greed hides itself so deeply, no one should be confident that it is not a problem for them.”

Beloved, I think most Christians today would say that they’ve dedicated their wealth to God, when in fact, we are just blind to our own idolatry and slavery to it. Rather than using our wealth to serve God, our wealth uses us to serve it.

Conclusion

Carlo Ponzi was a man who was a slave to money and to his wealth. It threw him into all sorts of sinful acts, plunging him into ruin and destruction. But by the grace of God, there go we. Most of us, if not all of us here, would say that we don’t live for the Almighty Dollar and yet in subtle ways, we prove that we do. Again, we are not to romanticize poverty. Very few people daydream about all the good they could do if they just had a little less. It’s always imagining what we could do if we just had a little more. And then often times, when given more, we spend it--not on all the good we could do--but on all the goods we could buy.

As we close out this portion of our Walk in Proverbs, we’ve seen what it means to dedicate our wealth to God. There are three necessary actions that we must take if we truly want to do it: first we dedicate our wealth for God’s glory, then for God’s gifting, and finally for God’s greatness. In reality, the last two fall under the umbrella of God’s glory. It’s the tangible and actionable way to glorify God with our wealth.

God has not called us to minimalism, but neither has he called us to opulence. He has called us to be his steward of his wealth that he has graciously placed in our care. We dedicate that wealth to him because in reality to is him. That’s what it means to put aside the American Dream and start living the heavenly one. Like those who were given talents, we will one day give an account for all that has been entrusted to us. Luke 12:48

Luke 12:48 ESV

Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.

Prayer

Our heavenly Father,

Move us to be a people who dedicate our wealth for your glory, your gifting, and your greatness. We know that it was your Son who taught us that where our treasure is, there will our heart be also. We want our hearts to be with you; therefore, our Father, our Giver, our Benefactor, our Good God, may we find you to be worthy of all that we are and all that we have. In Jesus’s name. Amen.